


A Light Left On In Brooklyn

by linzeestyle



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Porn, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 18:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18878797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linzeestyle/pseuds/linzeestyle
Summary: “Fury’s got nine cameras trained on your front door,” Bucky hisses into his neck. “The less dirt on you, the better.” The windchill in his voice is almost palpable, and Steve pulls back to look at him, eyes dark and glassy, and he links his fingers with Bucky’s cool metal ones, thumb running along the smooth seams where there used to be a pulse. He knows Bucky can’t feel this, but he’s watching Steve, anyway, breathing shallow and too-fast as Steve brings their joined hands up, kisses Bucky’s palm.“You’re not dirty, Buck.”





	A Light Left On In Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted in 2014. Canon was different then, as were we all.

There’s an open window in Steve’s apartment.

The room is cold when he gets in, and a cursory scan makes it clear as to why: there’s a scattering of wet slush tracked across the wooden floor, blackout curtains pillowing with anemic gusts of frozen air. They were sealed tight when Steve left, over seventy-two hours ago on orders to the Capitol: retina scans and fingerprint codes and an SI-grade cyber-cloak. It hasn’t kept the occasional entrepreneur from trying -- stray Hydra operatives, intrepid reporters with telescope lenses, a particularly unwieldy cyborg the Daily Bugle calls “Rhino” and Peter still does a terrible job of controlling -- but so far, no one’s found it. More to the point, the public hasn’t found it. So little of Steve’s is actually his own; that much hasn’t changed since he woke up in SHIELD’s medical bay.

 Tony insists on the imperviousness of his own technology. That doesn’t stop broken tech cells from blinking red when Steve pulls the curtains back, though, a drag of electric lines across the sill of the window. They’ve probably already sent a damage report back to Tony himself, and Steve forestalls the inevitable overreaction with a quick text message, assuring Tony’s personal number as to his own clumsiness, telling Tony it can wait until morning. He doesn’t case the building, lying as the promise taps out onto his touchscreen. There’s no point. It would take a ghost to get through Tony’s security.

For all of the surrealism of the Avengers’ roster, Steve still only knows one of those. 

Sure enough, pieces of heavy dark clothing chart a rough map towards the bedroom. A vest catches his eye and Steve grabs torn armor off of the couch, frowns at dried blood spattered over the collar. It joins a pair of boots near the edge of the door, and he’s entirely unsurprised to find Bucky sprawled out on his bed, fast asleep still in black pants and heavy grease paint. His cybernetic arm is flung over Steve’s side of the mattress and has a death grip on every pillow.

Steve’s eighty percent sure he’s drooling. 

He sits down in what little space Bucky hasn’t claimed as his own, shifting the mattress as he starts to undress. The motion makes Bucky grumble and shift, pushing at his back in annoyance.

“Shuddup,” he slurs, and Steve looks down to find one hazy eye peering at him. “Can’t say for sure, but I’m betting this is why you didn’t win the Cold War.”

Bucky mutters something in Russian that Steve’s heard often enough to recognize as an insult. “Yeah, yeah, three cheers for capitalism. You didn’t bring dinner why?”

 _Because you’ve been gone for three weeks_ , Steve doesn’t say, because it’s just another landmine he doesn’t want to step on. He can rack them all up by now, survey the angles, imagine how they’d fall apart with one unlucky hit. Bucky’s stiff when he sits up, but his skin is unmarred, and Steve hopes this time, at least, the targets in Bucky’s cross-hairs were of his own choosing.

“Wasn’t sure what you’d want,” he says instead. “Got a reason not to use the door?” His undershirt joins the growing pile of clothes on the floor, and Bucky blinks to watch him, now stripped to white boxer-briefs, like an interested cat. Steve ducks his head, suddenly aware he’s been performing history’s least coordinated  burlesque.

The lack of grace doesn’t seem to bother Bucky. There’s a glint of metal at the edge of Steve’s vision as Bucky hooks a finger into his dog tags, pulling him down into an uncoordinated kiss. He keeps pulling until Steve’s half on top of him, thigh slipping between Bucky’s own. “Look at that. Full salute.” He arches to prove his point.

Steve huffs and shifts off of him, still mentally cataloging the latissework of bruises and abrasions scattered across his stomach and arms. “You broke the cloaking system,” he tells him, warm in Bucky’s ear. “Now you have to play nice when Tony comes to fix it.”

Bucky makes a disgusted sound at Tony’s name and drags Steve back up into another greedy kiss, the heat and force of it shocking Steve into dumb compliance. It’s jealous in a way Bucky usually isn’t: metal fingers dig into Steve’s shoulder just the wrong side of painful, teeth dragging down his jaw and cheek, pausing to suck at his skin like he wants to leave a calling card. 

“Fury’s got nine cameras trained on your front door,” Bucky hisses into his neck. “The less dirt on you, the better.” The windchill in his voice is almost palpable, and Steve pulls back to look at him, eyes dark and glassy, and he links his fingers with Bucky’s cool metal ones, thumb running along the smooth seams where there used to be a pulse. He knows Bucky can’t feel this, but he’s watching Steve, anyway, breathing shallow and too-fast as Steve brings their joined hands up, kisses Bucky’s palm.

“You’re not dirty, Buck.”

Bucky sucks in a breath, eyes wide and unreadable and focused on Steve’s. His tongue darts out, wets his bottom lip, and Steve can’t help but stare as he does it -- he hasn’t been able to help himself since he was fourteen years old. Hasn’t gotten any better at hiding it, either. He’s only distracted for a moment, but Bucky’s quicksilver, now, and Steve finds himself on his back before he has a chance to think, arms pinned above his head and Bucky’s weight pressing down against his erection through their clothing. 

Beads of sweat have formed at Bucky’s temples and Steve watches him closely, pulling a hand out of Bucky’s grip, pushing his own hips up into something like a rhythm. They’re both still half- dressed, but that part isn’t new. Bucky’s response is, though, already making weak sounds in his throat when it’s usually hard to get him out of his head. Steve rocks up slowly, freed hand coming to tangle in Bucky’s hair, and when he pulls him down for a kiss this time, Bucky nearly tumbles over, mouth open and demanding when he makes contact with Steve’s own. Every time Steve moves it draws another tiny hitch of breath out of him, and Steve’s curious, now, even as worry creeps its way into the back of his brain. He’s never actually seen Bucky come in his pants.

A particularly sharp thrust and Bucky pulls away and sits up, eyes wide and pupils blown, fumbles with the buttons of his pants until Steve takes pity and does it for him. The buttons pull easy and Steve gets his fly open, wrapping his palm around Bucky’s cock.

Bucky’s riding on a hair trigger tonight, and it doesn’t take long at all before he’s panting, rocking into Steve’s fist, eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling in a way that makes Steve wonder exactly where he’s gone.

“Four hundred and thirty eight kills,” Bucky slurs. Steve stops, surprised, and Bucky reaches down to take over, jerking himself more roughly than Steve would ever dare. There’s no finesse to it, now, all sloppy desperation, and Bucky curls forward, free hand bracing on the hard plane of Steve’s chest. “Thirty-four assassinations. Sixteen American. S’all in--oh.” He lets himself fall forward, trapping his hand between them as he mouths at Steve’s collarbone, hips writhing desperately, grinding friction against their clothes. “Fury’s got it somewhere in case I don’t play nice.” He looks down at Steve with blown pupils, and an expression that suggests he thinks this counts. 

“Bucky--”

He ends on a hiccup, voice cracking, and Steve feels warmth seep through the open front of Bucky’s pants, tension draining from his body as his orgasm pulls through him. _Damn_ _it,_ Steve thinks, running a gentle hand through Bucky’s damp hair. He’s still half-hard, but mostly unnerved -- by where Bucky’s head is at, whatever took him there. That he thinks he deserves it, might even like it.

Sex is one thing, but Steve isn’t going to play this role for Bucky, the forbidden pedestal to his self-loathing. He sighs and shifts carefully, sliding Bucky’s weight off of of his body and onto the mattress. It earns him a noise of protest and Bucky’s metal fingers dig into his shoulder, too hard for a normal human to take.

 Steve flinches, but lets him cling.

In this, at least, is the shadow of familiarity. Bucky goes slack and stupid after sex, skin sticking hot to Steve’s even though the open window left the entire apartment cold, central heating be damned. The demons are in the little things: in his distrust of crowds, of public spaces; how he clutches, now, instead of holds; the gaussian blur of Slavic notes that creep onto his tongue when he’s too drunk or tired to spit them out.

“You gonna get yours now, too?” Bucky slurs into Steve’s chest, that same echo tinting his voice right now. The flat way he asks makes Steve feel cold, though, and he reaches to still Bucky’s hand, already sliding down Steve’s chest with detached precision.

“Maybe later,” he says, not meaning it at all, and ignores Bucky’s grunt of displeasure. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

Bucky rubs at his face with his flesh and bone hand, scowling at the cold, at the sticky mess in his pants. He kicks them off like they’ve offended him, and Steve patiently waits until he’s under the covers, knees pulled to his chest. He uncoils himself long enough to rummage something from the nightstand, and Steve holds his breath until Bucky tosses it down on the bed beside him, landing against Steve’s thigh. “Anniversary’s comin’, Stevie.”

Steve brushes off the nickname and picks up the glossy paper. It’s a sleek handbill for the National Museum of American History, touting a limited engagement exhibit. He remembers these from the last fundraiser at Stark tower. Bucky hadn’t been there -- somewhere in Italy, still dead in all the ways that matter to anyone but Steve -- but someone saved a copy, and it’s crumpled now and folded like he’s been carrying it in his pocket.

> _A Light Left On in Brooklyn: Captain America’s Notebooks: January 20, 2015-March 20, 2015_
> 
> _On_ _February 8, 1945, Howling Commando James “Bucky” Barnes gave his life in_ _service_ _of the United States while on a mission with Captain Steven G. Rogers, better known then and now as "Captain America." Friends since childhood, Barnes and Rogers shared a close bond, one that has inspired countless retellings and historical_ _debates. The letters, sketches, photographs, and notebooks in this exhibit tell an_ _intimate_ _story_ _of camaraderie, loss, and heroism._

Most of Steve’s things had ended up like this, after the plane crashed. He had no next of kin after Bucky died, no one to clean out his locker or sift through his notebooks. He’s been through everything the Smithsonian has, though, and he doesn’t mind this exhibit, the way it talks about Bucky, treats him like he was worth more than a sidekick in a world war storybook. They’d found video of them that not even Steve had seen and he has his own copy of that too, now, a gleaming plastic disk that sits on his bookshelf because he’s never been able to make himself watch it, add to the specters that already haunt his empty apartment. 

The flier’s focal point is from one of Steve’s sketchbooks, a drawing of Bucky from years before the war. All of twenty, maybe, the curve of his back mapped in broad, dark lines and the smudged charcoal of a cigarette leading trails of white chalk up the paper, across a cheekbone. He was beautiful, then -- still is, Steve thinks wistfully -- and Steve remembers drawing that picture, lying in bed with the blankets still tangled, Bucky naked and careless despite the half-opened windows. The sketch itself is innocuous, though, stripped of the memories that make Steve’s skin prickle, and the caption beside it offers an erroneous date and a brief biography, a shared past written with reverence to the dead. 

Bucky snatches the flier back, crumpling it between gleaming fingers. Steve knows better than to touch, but he shifts, placing his own palm down on the mattress between them, an invitation, a careful promise.

“Bucky…” 

“Died one hell of a long time ago.” Bucky balls up the flier and throws it across the room with near violence, shaking the dresser mirror when it hits. “You know they still keep pinning awards on a corpse now? Purple heart. Medal of honor.” He wraps his arms around his knees. “Bunch of metal saying he was the right kind of killer.” He looks down at his left hand.

Steve chews the inside of his cheek and says nothing. He wonders if Bucky remembers signing up in the first place, the absurdity of a last will and testament for two kids who had nothing. He’d left Steve his next of kin and he has both of those medals in a box under his bed, wrapped in careful velvet, a yellowing photo of Bucky in his uniform tucked away behind them. He’d thought about giving them to the Smithsonian, too -- Bucky’s uniform is there, pressed and clean and stored away in a room Steve never could quite bring himself to visit -- but then DC exploded into rubble and ghosts, and when the ashes cleared Steve had his own specter to deal with, the haunted eyes and patchwork body of the half of him that’s been missing since 1945. They’re thawing, slow, a little more each day, and Steve keeps the tin, hopes one day Bucky will realize just how much more he deserves then the pithy pieces of tradition inside.

Steve reaches across the space between them and tangles his fingers in Bucky’s. “Got something for you,” he says, and Bucky looks at him suspiciously, but doesn’t move.

Steve keeps his sketchbook on the nightstand still, soft leather moleskine feeling decadent and excessive. He never buys them himself, and yet they somehow seem to appear in the bedroom, Stark’s silent way of working Steve through his own head. This one is almost entirely full now, and he hands it to Bucky with that same old self-consciousness, ducks his head as Bucky opens the pages, flips through cityscapes and portraits of strangers and their old Brooklyn apartment, drawn with photo memory. Steve hears the sharp inhale halfway through the notebook, and he doesn’t have to look to know what Bucky’s found. 

“Thought you went down to the gym when you couldn’t sleep,” Bucky says quietly, and Steve glances over to find him tracing familiar lines with the edge of a metal finger.

Steve shrugs. “Gets lonely, sometimes. I wake up and I think--nobody gets this lucky twice." 

Bucky snorts, mouths the word _lucky_ like Steve’s suffered permanent freezer burn. He’s still flipping through the pages though, fingers tracing the pictures, eyes wide and shocked seeing himself through Steve’s eyes.

They’re all still sketches, rough and etched in motion and shadow, the sweep of black hair and curve of a neck, Bucky’s face in profile, lax and young in sleep. Another, naked but for a tangled blanket, and Steve was obviously up for a while, then, smudges of white chalk casting wisps of captured moonlight across Bucky’s chest and the line of his jaw. His cybernetic arm clutches the pillow like a lover and Steve has paused on every line there, the sleek silver plates that could kill him, have tried. Bucky hovers his hand over that part but doesn’t touch it. He swallows, clutches the notebook close. 

“Keep it,” Steve says. “It’s just-- they’re mostly you, anyway. I always wanted to get you to pose, you never sat still long enough.” 

Bucky shakes his head, curtain of hair obscuring his face until he reaches up, tucks it back in a messy gesture. “You still…” He sets the notebook down. “It’s not me. That guy, he--whatever he was, they turned him into some kind of hero. The kinda guy Captain America would want on his side. He’s not--and I’m not--”

The corner of his mouth tics with failed hysteria, and Steve remembers this part, too: how Bucky frayed at the ends when he ran out of options; when Steve was too sick for their paychecks to cover; when the food and the heat didn’t quite last through the month. Bucky might not remember yet but Steve tries all the same, pulling him into the center of the bed and tangling their bodies together, knee between Bucky’s shaking thighs and chin on the seam of Bucky’s cool metal shoulder. It earns him a rolling shudder, but Bucky doesn’t pull away.

Steve kisses Bucky’s ear, careful of his too-long hair. “We could go public. You don’t have to do this forever.”

“Commie pervert science experiment. They don’t have ticker tape parades for that.” “You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

Bucky huffs, reaching behind him to tug again at Steve’s dog tags. Pressed this close together, Steve can watch him reading them, pulled tight in human fingers, name and serial numbers for an agency still smoldering at the foot of the Potomac river. “Not gonna drag you through the mud. You know what would happen if they found out about this?” He waves his hand vaguely and frowns. “There’s not a happy ending here."

“We’ll make one. Just don’t leave again. Stop doing Nick's dirty work.” Steve tightens his arms around Bucky’s waist, sucks a kiss into the marred skin where human shoulder meets metal arm. “Stay, Buck.”

Bucky exhales like a sucker punch, like he can’t find it in him to keep up the argument. “They’re gonna love that. Fucking assassin, dirtying up a national treasure.”

“Been in love with you since we were kids. Thought you were dead and you came back to me anyway.” Steve kisses the back of his neck. “It’s a great story. Look at that flier, they’re already telling it.”

That, at least, makes Bucky chuckle, rusty and low but still genuine, still getting there. He fumbles for Steve’s hand, and Steve slides their palms together, grips him and holds on tight.

“Okay,” says Bucky, after a while. “It’s stupid as hell, but okay.”

Steve bites back the urge to grin like an idiot, to kiss Bucky senseless or do any of a dozen things that would inevitably close him right back off again, still nervous and skittish, convinced he shouldn’t be here. Instead he settles for putting his lips to Bucky’s temple, the way Bucky used to do for him back when they were kids, when the weather got bad and Steve’s chest was tight and rattling and it was all Bucky could do to hold him and ride it out.

 God knows he has enough to owe Bucky for, now. Steve can ride this for as long as Bucky needs it. He feels Bucky sigh and lean into the kiss, and he thinks, maybe this really will work. Maybe this time, Bucky will stay.

He squeezes Bucky’s hand one more time, pulls back enough to murmur into his ear. “Welcome home, Bucky.”


End file.
